Duke Ellington's Sacred Music Fills the Heart

By Rev. Ric Matthews, First United Church

There is a space where symphonies of sound and meaning transport us to different times and places , where our innermost  being resonates with the rhythm and our souls soar with the music, where we touch pain and are touched by Life, where we enter the dark and embrace the Light.

On November 19th  the Sacred Music of Duke Ellington, will take us to that Sacred Space. The notes crafted on paper years ago, the voice in the past that sang those notes into our hearts, the instruments and artists in the room on the night, your presence there in the moment are all woven into the fabric of that sacred space. The music becomes us. We become the music.  The shadows and the light in each of our personal lives are the diversity and discord that, as is the character of Jazz, become a blended experience of sacred music. The voices of the voiceless sing in this space. They disturb us with the disparity between us. They comfort us with the assurance of our shared experiences and needs.  We all are instruments of the discord and of the harmony.  As the music moves us and lifts us, it takes us gently and sometimes robustly to places of distress;  it wings us to places of Hope and Light; it calls us to listen and receive – and it compels us to participate and co-create.  Helpless in its passionate embrace, we touch the Sacred within ourselves, are touched by the Sacred in others and awed by the Sacred between us and beyond us. Once entered and experienced, the Sacred Space leaves us forever changed, at the same time both more vulnerable and more whole.

We enter the Sacred space separately and independently with our individual struggles and joys. In that space we become one collective symphony for Hope and Healing. When we leave we go in separate ways but always remain part of the music that connected us, part of the Hope that continues to sing in our hearts.
November 19th, Duke Ellington offers you a very special gift that you should not miss.

First United Church and Coastal Jazz Present
The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington
Featuring Dee Daniels, Marcus Mosely, Fred Stride Orchestra, the Sacred Music Gospel Choir, Tap Dancer Alex Dugdale.
November 19 at 8PM
St Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Click here for complete concert and ticket purchase information.

Dee Daniels

Marcus Mosely